Diana Olick

CNBC Real Estate Reporter

Diana Olick is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, currently serving as CNBC's real estate correspondent as well as the author of the Realty Check section on CNBC.com. She also contributes her real estate expertise to NBC's "Today" and "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams."

Prior to joining CNBC in 2002, Olick spent seven years as a correspondent for CBS News.

Olick began her career as a local news reporter at WABI-TV in Bangor, Maine; WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich.; and KIRO-TV in Seattle. She joined CBS in 1994 as a New York-based correspondent for the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" and "The Early Show." She also contributed pieces to "48 Hours" and "Sunday Morning." During that time, she covered such stories as the World Trade Center conspiracy trial and the Boston abortion clinic shooting.

In 1995, Olick was assigned to cover the Midwest as a Dallas bureau correspondent. In the three years she was there, she covered all forms of natural disaster, including the crash of TWA Flight 800, the JonBenet Ramsey murder mystery and was the exclusive correspondent for the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols. During that time, she also took a temporary assignment in CBS' Moscow bureau, where she chronicled the brief presidential campaign of Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1998, Olick was reassigned to the New York bureau and then immediately posted to Bahrain for the buildup to a possible second Gulf War. A year later, she went to Albania to cover the U.S. military buildup during the conflict in Kosovo.

Upon her return, Olick was reassigned to CBS' Washington bureau and the Capitol Hill beat. During Campaign 2000, Olick covered the Senate campaign of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and later joined the Bush campaign as a special correspondent for "The Early Show." That fall, she was named Supreme Court correspondent; her first case was Bush v. Gore.

Olick has a B.A. in comparative literature with a minor in soviet studies from Columbia College in New York and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.

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The trouble is that Fannie is inevitably going to have to sell those properties off into the marketplace, such as it is. The renters may get a stay of execution and some notice that eviction will come at some point, but it’s not home sweet home for the duration.

There seems to be some renewed energy behind a housing proposal leaked early last week. It’s the plan to have the Treasury buy home loans from Fannie and Freddie if the loans are given at 4.5 percent interest rates.

I applaud Fannie for trying to get ahead of the defaults, and I hope borrowers who don’t really need the workouts don’t waste Fannie’s time trying to get something for nothing. I fear that’s a big possibility.

The idea is that if a borrower can’t afford a home because the mortgage payment or principal is too high, they can instead sell equity in their home to a passive investor who would consequently share the equity gains or losses.

It’s truly amazing to me that a lobbyist who really needs something from the government would leak just the possibility of that something to the media, when that leakage would only harm their industry. Of course, I’m talking about the Treasury proposal/possibility/plan to buy mortgage debt at a rate that would allow lenders to offer buyers a 4.5 percent interest rate on the 30-year fixed.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that mortgage applications would surge last week, after the Fed announced it would buy GSE debt and mortgage-backed securities. Interest rates on the 30-year fixed dropped nearly a full percentage point.

I’m actually surprised it took this long. As more and more banks announced they were getting more and more aggressive on loan modifications, it seemed the investors in these loans were being just a little too silent.

Foreclosures will continue to rise unless the government comes up with an effective program that works for lenders and borrowers, sales of existing homes will bounce back and look for a major home builder to go belly up.